Vita Found Running Pirated PSP ISOs

September 14, 2012Written by Jesse Meikle

I don’t need to begin to tell you how much of an issue piracy was for the PSP, that’s why Vita’s security is so obnoxiously protective (I’d kill to transfer media files directly to the device without going through the frustratingly tedious, user-friendly content manager)

Until now the Vita has stayed in a fairly safe homebrew happy area when it came to hacking, and exploits, without piracy being possible by any known means; but that has changed.

The above video at least looks convincing, yet obviously there’s room for it to be a fake, however, Ps3Hax.net is confirming it as legit via well known PSP hacker Wololo, who was quoted as saying:

You might remember the hacker whom I nicknamed “Tony”, who was able to run PS1 games and psp isos with a CFW on a PS Vita. Or you might remember Davee’s HEN running on a PS Vita back in march. You might also remember that I mentioned that several groups are now in possession of a PSP kernel exploit on the Vita.

Well it seems today that a beta tester for one of these groups was not completely careful, and leaked a video showing him running psp isos on a Vita

Wololo went on to specifically address, and confirm the video, while placing a lowest-case number on the amount of teams who have access to the PSP kernel:

What I can tell you right now is that this video is legit, and that this is neither Davee nor “Tony”‘s work. But this should not be a surprise to most people here, as I’ve mentioned in the past that we know of at least 5 groups that have PSP kernel exploits.

The YouTube uploader TheZ94 has stated that the video above is merely for demonstration purposes, and that the exploit won’t be made public; but how long can we hope that the “at least 5 groups” with access to the PSP kernel won’t release, or leak the keys to PSP-Vita piracy.

PSP game piracy on the PlayStation Vita may not seem like a big deal right now, but the possibilities that may stem from this exploit (especially when it’s eventually made public) could have sweeping ramifications on the already unclear future of the Vita should further exploitations be found.